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Unread 04-12-2010, 14:12
EthanMiller EthanMiller is offline
Lead Programmer
AKA: Socks
FTC #4356 (The Zip Ties)
Team Role: Programmer
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Rookie Year: 2009
Location: Clayton, NY
Posts: 121
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Re: [FTC]: Samantha? Like it or hate it?

I was also at the regional - It's hard to be specific about the problem because there wasn't any communication about them - an announcement about technical difficulties, followed by "We'll be back in half an hour", then two hours later, Alliance selection. Each team had only 2 rounds of play, except the first place team (which had 3 matches) and the last place team (which had 1).

It's worth noting that the communication breakdown wasn't only between the event staff and the teams - I spoke to many event people trying to figure out what was going on, and noone knew anything.

This also screwed up alliance selection - how do you pick alliances when you haven't seen everyone play? Additionally, they redid stats halfway through, so two teams who hadn't seen the updated lists had to pick without time to think about who they would pick.

Overall, though, other than the communication, Clarkson regional did do an excellent job of finishing the event, given the technical problems. Worth noting, there was a lot of testing of the equipment the night before, with no problems.

It's reminiscent of FRC with all the wireless issues with the new system.

In terms of the actual issues, sometimes communication would simply stop between the robots and the FMS, sometimes there were delays of up to five seconds, sometimes the Samantha modules wouldn't connect. Without communication, though, there wasn't a lot of seeing the what caused it.
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FRC 1713 K Island Gears 2009, 2010 (Not 2011 due to budget, hopefully 2012!) - Fingerlakes Regional

FTC 4356 The Zip Ties 2010-2011 Season - NNYRC (2010 9th seed).
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